Chore Chart Week: Monday

I bet you have been positively dying to find out how my first day of chore charting went!

Well, the photo shows my nice and clean living room, as well as our new furniture. One of the things I really like about this new set up is that is leaves very few flat surfaces for clutter, which forces us to find homes for things, rather than deposit them on the coffee table, or on our end tables. Because now we don't even have end tables. Ha!

Anyway, back to cleaning: The living room was pretty quick and easy. I picked up the clutter and put things away. I straightened the couch. I picked up the 40,000 toys from Espen's corner of the room. I vacuumed. Done. This was made a lot quicker and easier due to the fact that I had already dusted and cleaned the living room on Friday, which lends credence to my theory that you can get away with doing a little bit often, rather than a whole lot every once in a while. I think the whole thing took me about 20-30 minutes.

The kitchen was a different story. Even though I had mopped and cleaned on Friday, it was suffering deeply from the battle wounds of the weekend, where no one was willing to take responsibility for more than a load of dishes. I was also running out of time before Nick got home (no productive behaviour after 6 PM!), and Espen was awake, which meant that I could only do things in pretty short spurts. I had already set the oven to self-clean, so it had already gloriously cleaned itself for five hours, which meant that all I had to do was wipe out the white ashy stuff. I wish all appliances could clean themselves. Then I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters and table and washed all the hand-washable stuff. And that was basically it.

I would have liked to do a much more thorough job, but Espen was not in the mood for sharing. It looked miles better when I was done, though, which was really the point. Then we made dinner, and were almost back to where we started.

Ever get the feeling of constantly pushing a giant boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down and start all over again?

And today - bathrooms! The thrills! The spills! No wonder you read my blog :)